RSSVirgin Ends Digital Music Venture
By the Betanews Staff | Published September 24, 2007, 11:38 AM
Virgin is calling it quits in the digital music business. The company has stopped selling tracks and accepting new customers as of Friday, and will shut down for good on October 19. New sales of music will end September 29, according to a message on the UK portion of the site. Those customers who have a payment due before the shut off date will lose access the day their next payment is due, according to the note.
The US side will also be ceasing, although it will handle the closure somewhat differently. Whereas UK users lose their unused credits, US users will be able to transfer them for use in Napster's online store. In either case, subscription customers will lose access to their music completely upon the 19th. The closing of Virgin Digital follows that of MTV's Urge, which shut its doors due to ineffectiveness in competing with Apple's iTunes.
Looks like Virgin group has decided to withdraw from music retailing all together. They sold their UK Megastores last week, they're all going to be called Zavvi from November. The US Megastores were sold ages ago too.
The US Virgin Digital site has been pointing to Napster for months and, according to Virgin Digital's site, any unused months subscription will be refunded to UK users, plus they get a free months subscription to Virgin Media's new streaming Jukebox service. People who pay as you go are charged when they download the tracks, so no credit to lose their either. Not really as bad as this article makes out after all.
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That's not technically true about Urge... They actually just merged with Rhapsody. Not shut down. I think until they are DRM free, digital music subscription services will never succeed, because they can't put the music on an iPod.
And before anyone says, yes I am aware there are ways. I'm just saying the average person won't do that.
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""Whereas UK users lose their unused credits, US users will be able to transfer them for use in Napster's online store."
I'm not even in the UK; but these people are called thieves in anybody's language...
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"Whereas UK users lose their unused credits, US users will be able to transfer them for use in Napster's online store."
Typical.
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I wonder why
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